At 2.5, Zoe is a huge lover of babies. Since there are none around here (usually), she's also a huge lover of baby dolls. Realistic-looking ones are her favorites, and she swaddles, rocks, pats, burps and sings to them lovingly. "Rockabye baby, inna treetop....Rockabye baby inna treetop.....".She even has parental concerns. After finishing her lunch, she'll set down her sandwich crust and look at me with alarm, "Where's my baby!?" And she'll rush off to find one of them, checking to make sure that no harm has come to it since the last time she dropped it down the stairs or carried it by the head.
I don't give too much parenting advice (I'm saving it all up to unleash when the non-plastic grandbabies arrive in 20 years,) but she has figured out how to do most things anyway. This is likely from watching the many moms with babies in the babysitting room at the athletic club where I work. Most of us are too shy to stick our nose between a breastfeeding mom and her baby, but Zoe is not! "What's BABY DOING? Baby's Eating!?"
So, there's Zoe swaddling her baby, and feeding it juice (little mommy has to take a few sips too to make sure it's tasty,) rocking and patting, and even writing on baby's face with markers like a real mommy would. And when baby gets fussy, she now lifts up her shirt so baby doll can breastfeed too.
Recently I've been discussing with moms and friends about the studies and debates showing that breastfed babies are smarter down the road. Some say that the milk itself may not make babies smarter, but that educated moms with high IQs are more likely to breastfeed, and so their highly-educated IQ-nurtured babies are the breastfed (and smarter) contingent.
Either my daughter is highly-educated or breastmilk makes babies smart. Either way, my grandkids are off to a great start.
"Rockabye baby, inna treetop..." I'll hold off on the advice for now, but maybe I'll teach her some more song lyrics.
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